It is Pride Month right now! A time that celebrates and acknowledges the increasingly visible LGBT community; a community of which I am a part of. Its also a time for conservatives to wail and scream as if they are being personally victimized by a series of colorful flags.
Ooooooo…..Spooky!
In my many, many, many, many, many, many years of writing about elections, I covered LGBT candidates and issues countless times. This year has been so chaotic with redistricting and the fast-approaching midterms that several article ideas I had for this month have sadly fallen to the wayside for now. However, I still have at least two articles set to come out later this month on LGBT topics.
In the meantime, I wanted to use this article to link to some previous writings I have done on LGBT issues. These are pieces that many of you newer subscribers may not have spotted in my archives. Feel free to give any of these articles a look as I work on upcoming pieces.
I have divided my archives up into two sections, the REALLY OLD archive, and the more modern years of writing.
The Really old Archives
I started at FSU in 2005, and my entire college career was spent with the fight over gay marriage going on. In fact, I met my longtime closest friend, Danielle, when she was arguing with a conservative classmate that was celebrating a marriage ban in Texas. It was a time of disappointments. Gay Marriage was not popular with the broader public yet, and you could barely get a decent chunk of Democratic Senators to endorse the idea.
As the early 2010s came around, I began to start an early blog/website. This original WordPress, which is filled with terrible grammar, some takes I cringe at now, and really bad maps, saw me cover LGBT fights several times. You can read them below. I will stress the maps absolutely suck, as they come from an era where I was still learning the process.
A 2011 article looking at the fight over Civil Unions in Washington State
A Spring 2012 Article looking at polls showing Obama was not hurt by endorsing Same-Sex Marriage
In 2012, I wrote about the failure of conservative to pass a Same-Sex Marriage ban in Minnesota.
These articles give insight into developments happening in the fight over same-sex marriage in the first term of Obama. The second-to-last article, looking at Obama endorsing same-sex marriage before his re-election, is a good read for seeing how so many people claimed Obama would lose the election for his stance. Not only did this not happen, but his support helped shift voter attitudes. Something modern Democrats should keep in mind now as the LGBT community is again under attack.
Lets now move on to my much more recent articles.
Modern LGBT Archives
The first article you can check out in the piece I wrote just last year. This piece covers some of the first openly LGBT officials ever elected in Florida.
This article highlights several important trailblazers in Florida election history. Arguable the original Florida trailblazer was Richard Heyman, who became Florida’s first openly gay mayor when he was elected to the post in Key West in 1983.
Heyman’s election may have made him the first openly gay mayor in the country (some have claimed this, I’m digging around). This election I only briefly touched on in my 2025 article. However, this year one of my Pride articles is going to go much more in depth on the Heyman political rise and the gay community that rose in Key West in the 1970s an 1980s. Expect that article around the end of the month.
The first-electeds article looks at several other important trailblazers. I cover the election of Dean Trantalis in 2003, who became Fort Lauderdale’s first openly gay commissioner when he won by just 50 votes.
The article also looks much closer to the present day. There I cover the election of Shevrin Jones to the State Senate in 2020. With his elections, Jones, already the state’s first openly gay Black man, became Florida’s first openly gay State Senator.
As I write this, Jones has just announced he is running for Congressional District 24, a race where he is the early front-runner.
Of course, not everything I write about is positive advancements. One article I wrote a full four years ago was a deep dive into the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in Florida.
The vote, which came at a time where a solid majority of voters nationwide still did not support same-sex marriage, was an easy win for the anti-equality forces, though pockets of opposition did exist. I delve into that in my article.
At the time of the 2008 vote, the most reliable pockets of opposition were students, Jewish retirees, and liberal suburbs.
One notable spot of opposition to the ban was Key West, which rejected the ban by a two-to-one margin.
Monroe County was the lone county to reject the ban, with Key West the anchor for this opposition.
Miami-Dade County, meanwhile, did back the ban on same-sex marriage. However, the story in Dade is much more mixed. Back in 2002, the county voted to reject an effort to repeal the county’s gay rights ordinance; a major victory for the LGBT community.
I documented that vote, and the public battles over gay rights dating back to the 1970s, in my article from 2024.
That article dives into the infamous 1977 vote block an gay rights ordinance; with a campaign led by Anita Bryant.
International Elections
My next archives article looks at an election just 90 miles away from Dade county - a look back at a same-sex marriage referendum in CUBA!
That’s right, back in 2022, Cuba had what is arguably their first free election since the rise of Castro. The vote in question was a public referendum on the nation’s family law code, which was being updated in many ways, one of them being to legalize same-sex marriage.
Now as I lay out in that article, I am well aware Cuba is not a free democracy and is often the home of sham elections. This vote, however, was the first to allow free campaigning and doesn’t show the typical signs of ballot stuffing. The Government appeared to want to use this low-consequence vote as a way to test public sentiment. The measure easily passed.
My article on the Cuba vote delves into the reason the Cuban voters of the island are arguably less religiously-conservative than in Miami and the novelty of a free vote on the island. I think its a very fascinating story.
Cuba is not the only nation to have a vote on same-sex marriage. Way back in 2015, I wrote about Ireland’s historic public referendum to legalize same-sex marriage. A vote that easily passed in a nation often seen as a conservative/Catholic island.
My article on that referendum was followed up several years later about Ireland’s growing socially liberal attitudes.
Looking at Florida’s Attacks on the LGBT Community
A far less pleasant topic, but one I did not want to leave out from this posting, was my looks at the anti-LGBT laws that have been pushed in Florida. My articles from 2023 dove into Florida’s infamous “don’t say gay” legislation and looked at attacks on Transgender care.
These articles go together. I especially recommend issue 99, as it aims to dispel many of the lies about what transgender care means. Spoiler, no one is talking about surgery. Both these issues are research heavy, giving you many resources for either understanding the issues at hand.
Final Article
As I wrap this special newsletter up, and resume my writing and researching for upcoming pieces, the last article I recommend is a piece I wrote right after the 2024 election results. This article addressed the claims that Trump’s 2024 victory was due to social issues harming Democrats; a view that led to a rush of people to claim Democrats needed to abandon LGBT and other social issues.
This article corrects the record on some mid-understood polling and highlights the importance economic conditions played in the election. The thesis of my piece is not that Democrats must abandon their social positions, but that they must make the bulk of their campaign rhetoric around economic issues - which is the largest driver of voter sentiment. I compare the 2024 reactions to the 2004 election, where pundits incorrectly believed Democrats lost because of same-sex marriage (they didn’t). I cite all my findings in the link above.
With that, see you all soon! Happy Pride!